Home/Glossary/IP Reputation

IP Reputation

A trustworthiness score assigned to IP addresses based on observed behavior, used to identify malicious traffic.

Threat IntelligenceAlso called: "ip threat intelligence", "ip blacklist"

IP reputation services track which IPs are associated with attacks, spam, and abuse.

Reputation indicators

  • Spam sending history.
  • Malware distribution.
  • Botnet participation.
  • Brute force attacks.
  • Scanning and probing.
  • Age of IP assignment.
  • ASN (network) reputation.

Reputation sources

  • Blacklists (DNSBL, RBL).
  • Threat intelligence feeds.
  • Honeypot networks.
  • Spam trap data.
  • Crowdsourced reports.

Use cases

  • Email filtering (block spam senders).
  • Web application firewalls (block attackers).
  • Access control (geofencing, threat blocking).
  • Fraud detection (payment, account creation).

Limitations

  • Shared IPs (cloud/VPN) can have mixed reputation.
  • False positives from legitimate scanning.
  • IP address rotation by attackers.
  • Legitimate users behind proxies/VPNs.